Kitch there are people who will advise oyu much better than me but I would suggest starting out by getting a hosting package which will give you the space to run a forum.
Once you get used to using an FTP to access everything and upload pics and video clips etc on oyur own space rathe rthan photobucket or similar you will find the forum business much more easy to understand.

you dont need a lot of webspace, its mostly just the MySQL database you need, then download the PHPBB install files and start reading the instructions! The trick comes when things start to go wrong,t hen you need some interesting computer skills to keep things running! Then theres security, backups, stability!

My web hosting package included the stuff to make a forum. I did this in about 2 minutes:http://carlgibbs.com/forums/
And I'm certainly not a computer wizz! Obviously actually running it migt involve a bit more knowledge, but there's plenty of help/resources out there!

Standard GALLERY and standard PHPBB applications, so i've got to ask who you get your hosting from as you normally have to pay a fortune to get MySQL, and all the photo edit php functions that associate with gallery!

Doesn't matter how much it costs, sounds like you've landed on your feet there Carl, and Gallery 2 is one hell of a gallery package!

I got a really good deal from http://www.1337hosts.com/, I kinda know the guy who runs it via another forum - costs me £11 a year. Not sure if they do that package any more but I can certainly enquire about it. Uses something called cpanel to configure everything - some people I've talked to dont like it but it's perfect for a non-techie-type person like me!

The package originally came with Gallery 1, but after some issues I installed Gallery 2 myself a few months ago.

jonkw wrote:Thats good, its great to get mySQL for that sort of money.

As has been said, all you need is some hosting space with mySQL installed to run a forum. A few of us could help with the set up, I'm sure.
The problem with hosting these forums is the amount of bandwidth (data transfer) that your hosting package allows. Have a look at webstats for this forum for last month, and you wil see that these things do begin to spiralhttp://www.bxclub.co.uk/webalizer/usage_200608.html over 6.5gb last month

Interesting stats Jon. What is staggering if I read it correctly is that the USA uses this site almost equally to the UK. I would never have believed that BX's were of any consequence to the Americans.

Or by 'US Commercial' does it just mean they are trawling for people to 'Spam' ?

jonkw wrote:The USA bit, I think its more likely people with PC's who still have their time zone set to the USA default or something, or the PC is at standard Microsoft defaults which assumes its in the USA. This is just a guess!

More likely to be robots from search engines trawling through the Internet - most of these are based in the USA. I've found the same with other sites I've been involved with.